UK seeks to create IPPM hub

September 17, 2015

UK Integrated Pest Management experts have described how IPM – already an interdisciplinary subject – is set to become even more so as the importance of pollinators to agriculture receives greater attention.

Writing in Pan European Networks: Government
, the authors, including ENDURE’s Nick Birch, who heads the Hutton IPM Centre at
The James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland, provide an overview of how IPM is developing in Europe.

They describe the changing European Union policy framework, which has underlined IPM’s importance in helping Europe meet food demands balanced with more sustainable approaches to agriculture following environmental concerns about an over-reliance on pesticides. And they highlight the ongoing concerns over the effects of insecticides on bees, which in 2013 led to the EU introducing a two-year moratorium on three neonicotinoid insecticides in flowering crops.

They note: “Over 150 European crops are dependent upon, or enhanced by, insect pollination. These crops include over a dozen different fruits, such as apple, orange, and tomato, important protein crops such as field beans, French beans and soya, oilseed crops like oilseed rape and the important fodder crops, clover and alfalfa. This question goes far beyond the aesthetics of pollinators; the input of honeybees alone to crop pollination is estimated to be worth over €4bn per year in Europe; a key ecosystem service for EU farmers.”

The authors, who include Richard Hopkins, from the
European Centre for Integrated Pest Management (EUCIPM) at the University of Greenwich’s Natural Resources Institute and colleague Gillian Summers, are seeking to take IPM beyond its already broad remit, giving pollinator health greater attention.

They conclude: “Integrated Pest Management is an interdisciplinary subject, and is becoming more so, as it expands conceptually to become Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM). It often requires the input of a number of specialists in order to cover the many aspects which arise within farming systems. The EUCIPM at the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich and the Hutton IPM Centre at The James Hutton Institute, together with their many partners, are working on the development of an IPPM Hub within the UK. Only by combining the strengths of several centres of excellence can many of the complex aspects of IPM systems be addressed.”